King James Version · Egypt and Sinai
Exodus 20
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And spake all these words, saying, I am thy , which have brought thee out of the land of , out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven , or any of any thing that is in above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not thyself to them, nor them: for I thy am , visiting the of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my . Thou shalt not take the name of thy in ; for will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in . Remember the , to keep it . Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the of thy : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy that is within thy : For in six days made and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the , and hallowed it. thy and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which thy giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not . Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the , and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto , Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not speak with us, lest we . And said unto the people, Fear not: for is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye not. And the people stood afar off, and drew near unto the thick where was. And said unto , Thus thou shalt say unto the , Ye have seen that I have talked with you from . Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy , thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and thee. And if thou wilt make me an of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine , that thy be not discovered thereon.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
Christians read this chapter differently
- Are images of Christ permitted? · Exodus 20:4-6
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
The world at this moment · Egypt and Sinai, 1450 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel in and then out of Egypt, at a period when Egypt was an imperial power that also controlled Canaan. The nation is formed as a people with a law before it has any land.
- Egypt
- The New Kingdom at its imperial peak, with a professional army, a chariot corps, and control reaching up through Canaan. Ramesses II reigns for sixty-six years and covers the country in monuments to himself. Egyptian power in this period is the reason Canaan is garrisoned rather than free.
- The Hittites
- The other superpower, in what is now Turkey, and Egypt's rival for the Levant. The two fight the largest chariot battle of the ancient world at Kadesh, then sign a treaty whose text survives from both sides. Hittite treaty form, with its historical prologue, stipulations, witnesses, blessings, and curses, is the shape the Sinai covenant takes, which is one of the stronger arguments for the antiquity of that material.
- The Aegean
- Mycenaean Greece: warrior kings in stone citadels at Mycenae and Pylos, keeping palace accounts in Linear B. The world of the Trojan War stories, whatever lies behind them.
- Further afield
- The Shang dynasty in China is casting extraordinary bronzes and writing questions to its ancestors on ox bones. In Mesoamerica the Olmec are beginning the first civilisation of the Americas.